Once Upon a Time
by Sandileina
Summary: Sanada reflects on once upon a time, before Atobe came along. Past onesided SanaKiri.


**Disclaimer: **If you gave me them, then I would worship you until the day I died. And then some. ;pp

**Rating: **PG

**Warnings: **Shounen-ai, slightly angsty

**Summary: **Sanada reflects on once upon a time, before Atobe came along. Past (one-sided) SanaKiri.

**Author's notes: **Another Rikkai drabblething. **You don't have to have read the ones that come before this, but it might help a bit. **The drabblething list goes:

**Times of Stress**

**Passing the Time**

**How to ask out Marui Bunta**

**Four Days Later**

**October Ice**

**Because I Love You**

**Evil**

**Further Nonsense**

**Dear Diary**

**Kind of… the same**

**100 Word Challenges**

**Driver in a Hurry, Child in a Coma**

**Doctor, doctor!**

**The Woes of Solomon Grundy**

**I'm Not Going**

**The Little Things**

**He WHAT?!**

**Operation: Christmas Party**

**Being Fukubuchou**

**Once Upon a Time**

Well, it's a tradition now that every fifth drabblething is reflective/angsty in some way, shape or form. :) This is the twentieth drabblething… I know I keep saying this, but WOW. Can't believe it. All thanks to the people who review, of course! And **Linc**, for being Teh Lobe. ;pp

Dedicated to and requested by **Toh Sock**. Here you go, m'dear! Hope you don't mind that it's vaguely angsty… if you wanted something humorous, then please feel free to make a second request :) Only, see, I can't write AkutsuTaka cos that pairing is really hard to write well, and in my little spinning world Sanada would never really get together with Akaya, so… this was the only option… -sweatdrops-

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He can't remember exactly when or why, but Sanada knows for a fact that once-upon-a-time he harboured a strong crush on the ace of the Rikkai tennis team.

It might have been last year, come to think of it. It might have started when Sanada first saw him challenging Yukimura to a match, and losing horribly. In fact, it did.

He'd watched the match, annoyed with the stupidity and arrogance of this first year who thought he could win against an opponent that was already considered Japan's number one in the junior high tennis circuit. Then he'd admired his tennis skills, his tenacity, and had readily agreed to give him a match himself when challenged.

The furious, unshed tears in green eyes when Sanada inevitably won… the blazing determination to keep trying that was somehow hot and cold at the same time… Sanada had never seen someone who was so full of life that it was choking them.

He wasn't vice-captain then. He didn't have the responsibilities he had now; he didn't carry the duty of looking after the team. And so he didn't regularly interact with the strange boy called Kirihara Akaya. But he watched him at practise, and he watched from the library window on the second floor as Kirihara-kun, as he called him then, hit tennis balls against the wall of the clubhouse after school when most people had gone scurrying home.

None of his teachers seemed to like him. Well, with the exception of his history teacher, who seemed to absolutely love him. Sanada got the impression that you either loved him, hated him, or disliked him. It seemed impossible to just like him, or to be indifferent to him altogether.

Sanada had always been fairly sure that his taste in females and males was pretty similar, crush-wise; he liked people who were patient, sensible, kind-hearted, and polite to their elders. Kirihara-kun was impatient and hot-tempered, violent, didn't seem to realise that actions had consequences, and was most definitely not polite to his elders (or to anyone, for that matter). Except for Yukimura. Three months after he joined the tennis club, he started to idolise Yukimura to the point of some untouchable god, and even though it was a long time before the next Captain needed to be decided, he started to call him Yukimura-buchou, and then 'Mura-buchou. But neither the befriending or the name were really a surprise; after all, Yukimura possessed some sort of glowing charisma that drew everyone to him, even little demonic brats like Kirihara, and he was without doubt the best player in the whole club. Kirihara-kun seemed to take it for absolute granted that Yukimura was going to become the next Rikkai buchou, totally deaf to the rumours that Sanada was being considered for Captain under the reasoning that he was a very hard worker and everyone would probably be too scared of him by the time he was in his third year to disobey him.

Based on Kirihara-kun's outward personality, Sanada couldn't understand why he was so drawn to him. Now though, with hindsight, he thinks he can understand a little.

Akaya was different. He carried a lot of confusion with him, a lot of pain that he took out on everyone around him. It was a while before Sanada understood that. In fact, he probably wouldn't have seen it at all if Yukimura hadn't talked to him about it. He'd be the first to admit that his people skills weren't the best in the world, although they were a lot better than some.

Akaya was just… Akaya. He was complex and bratty and when he smiled adoringly at Yukimura Sanada caught himself wishing he could be on the receiving end of such a smile.

Akaya broke through Sanada's previous conceptions of what he liked and did not like in a person. He taught him, albeit completely unintentionally, that some traits which were abhorrent in some people could be plus points in others. Maybe that deep-felt crush on Akaya was the reason Sanada was able to respond when the arrogant, disdainful Atobe started throwing suggestive looks and comments at him. Maybe it was all thanks to him that Sanada and Atobe are so contented now, together.

Sometimes, when he's not quite feeling himself, Sanada goes down the 'what-if' path and wonder what it would have been like if he'd been brave or irrational enough to take Akaya as his boyfriend. But he never goes very far. All in all, he knows that Akaya would have driven him insane after a while. They just weren't compatible in that sense. Akaya had an affection-starved black hole inside him that could never really be satisfied, no matter how much anyone tried. Now, thanks to the conjoined efforts of Yukimura and later Marui, the hole is a lot smaller. But the crush he once had on the curly-haired boy is gone and it's now a moot point anyway.

Sanada makes an effort to never forget the lessons that falling for Akaya taught him. He thinks they're probably some of the most important life-lessons he's ever learnt. But now that he knows Akaya so much better, and now that he knows what falling in love for the first time with Atobe feels like, he knows that he'll never think of Akaya like that again. He'll just remember his private once upon a time, and thank his lucky stars that he met Akaya before Atobe, and not the other way around.

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Sandy: Yeah… I considered making this an October Ice chapter, but I decided that October Ice should be strictly Tango Pair, so… :3

This was hard to write, so I hope it was alright. I just couldn't make myself proofread it, so it's not polished at all… but I think I did pretty well, ne? –Looks hopeful-

I'm slowly but surely working my way through the requests… xDD LOL.

Please review and tell me what you thought!

Until next time 3


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